Friday Morning: Everybody Map!; Candidates Practice For The Catskills; And Palin To Appear On SNL

Good morning, happy people.

The map's the meme today, with all the papers aflutter over which states are turning which colors and rampant speculation about which parts of America the road to victory traverses. Sticking with that hackneyed metaphor, the general consensus is that Obama's road is wider and could traverse a variety of routes, whereas McCain is left with a narrow bike path that entails hanging onto everything Bush painted red in 2004. NYT's Adam Nagourney and Jim Rutenberg:

Mr. Obama's advisers said they would use the remaining 19 days of the campaign to focus mainly on capturing states that President Bush won in 2004; he is going to Missouri, North Carolina and Virginia, over the next three days and spending two days in Florida next week.

(snip)

By contrast, Mr. McCain is spending the next three days campaigning in states that Mr. Bush won in 2004 and that earlier this year Republicans had considered relatively safe: he will visit Florida on Friday, followed by North Carolina, Virginia and Ohio. Republicans said their hopes of capturing any state the Democrats won in 2004 appeared to be dwindling, though they said they held out hope for Pennsylvania, where Mr. McCain campaigned on Thursday but where he has recently slipped far behind Mr. Obama in some polls.

Via the WP's Dan Balz and Shailagh Murray, Republican strategist Mike Murphy says McCain is unlikely to squeak out a win battleground by battleground; what he needs is a big-time game-changer:

McCain faces challenges in so many states that Republican strategists said there is no state-by-state answer to his problem. "He's too far in the hole," said Mike Murphy, a former McCain adviser. "He has to move the whole country his way to get back in the game, and at that point the North Carolina-type problems will fade and he will be back in battle in places like Colorado, Ohio, New Hampshire and Nevada."

The WP looks this morning at the Obama camp's organizational dominance in Virginia -- a state last carried by a Democrat in 1964. And the LA Times examines the race for Florida -- once considered a major stretch for the Dems, and now a pure tossup -- where the Obama camp is hoping for big turnout from newly-registered voters.

You can see NPR's electoral map here, complete with predictions from resident political soothsayer Ken Rudin.

But Obama is warning his supporters against overconfidence. At a breakfast yesterday he warned supporters that if they were feeling "giddy or cocky" he had two words for them: "New Hampshire." (Polls showed Obama leading Hillary Clinton by as much as 8 points before that primary, but Clinton came out two points ahead.) Then last night after a joint fundraising performance by Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, Obama used a party-deprecating line that's often traded in Washington newsrooms and watering holes, but not usually thrown out on the stump:

Don't underestimate the capacity of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Don't underestimate our ability to screw it up...I want everybody running scared. Over the next 18 days, other than your family and your job, I want you to make a decision that there is nothing more important than bringing about this change that we need.

Dean, Pelosi, and Reid must have loooooved reading that one.

McCain, meanwhile, is getting edgier in those battlegrounds. Widely reported this morning: a slew of robo-calls (that's where you answer the phone and get a recorded message) paid for by the McCain campaign and the RNC. Sample:

You need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home, and killed Americans.

Jonathan Martin has the full audio of that call. (As loyal readers of this blog should now be aware, Obama's work with Ayers on charity boards in the 1990s -- by which time Ayers was a college professor and respected member of the Chicago community -- had no relationship with Ayers' violent acts as a member of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. More here if you need a refresher.)

From tragedy to comedy...last night both candidates donned white tie and gave comedic speeches at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a fundraiser for needy kids organized by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York. And they seemed to pull off their lines pretty well. Sample knee-slappers...

OBAMA: "Contrary to the rumors you have heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-el, to save the planet Earth."

MCCAIN: "I can't shake the feeling that some people here are pulling for me. I am delighted to see you here tonight, Hillary."

Tapper has videos of both performances.

And finally, Sarah Palin will apparently appear on SNL this weekend. As herself? As Tina Fey? As Joe the Plumber? We'll be TiVoing it for sure.

-- Evie Stone

11:30 AM ET | 10-17-2008 | permalink

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